Wedding launches couple on military career
Young love warmed Uniontown City Hall on Thursday as Mayor James Sileo married a teenaged couple that is embarking on careers in the military. In City Council chambers, a room usually reserved for more earthly commitments, Nicholas Vinoverski, 19, of West Leisenring and the former Jennifer Reynolds, 18, exchanged wedding vows and rings and kissed that first long kiss as husband and wife.
The groom’s parents, Martin and Marsha Vinoverski, said they were happy their son found someone who he cares for and who cares for him.
Reynolds, who said she comes from a military family and lived in different parts of the country, did not have family members in attendance, but U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Joseph Church, who recruited the couple, stood in and gave her away in the ceremony.
For Sileo, a World War II veteran, he said this was the sixth wedding he performed in the 16 years he has been mayor.
City Hall employees took on the role of a surrogate family making arrangements to have flowers and a post ceremony dinner donated. They also decorated the room and chipped in to buy a wedding cake.
Employees also attended the ceremony and congratulated the young couple.
Their arrangements came as a pleasant surprise to the newlyweds who had planned a simple, unassuming service.
“We didn’t expect all this,” Nicholas Vinoverski said. “They really went out of their way.”
The couple’s military plans were at least part of what motivated the effort.
Jennifer Vinoverski has been in the Air Force since September and is leaving Thursday for her assignment at a base in Japan.
Her husband is scheduled to report to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, in April for six and half weeks of basic training. He is scheduled to leave for the same base in Japan in September.
That timetable is what led them to have Sileo perform the marriage.
Vinoverski said the couple wanted to get married before their military assignments would separate them, but they did not have enough time to plan a church wedding.
He said his wife, Marsha, whose brother is an Air Force technical sergeant serving his second tour of in Iraq, knows the mayor and asked him to marry the couple.
Church said the Air Force does everything it can to station married couples at the same base.
Nicholas Vinoverski said he had eyes for his new bride the first time they met when they worked together at Shop ‘N Save.
His wife said it was in November 2005.
“I just thought she was really beautiful,” her husband said. “I walked up behind her and said: You’re really cute.”
Barton’s Flower Shop donated the flowers and DiMarco’s donated the dinner.